Gary O’Neil says one of the most satisfying parts of his job is allowing supporters to believe after Wolves’ fine win at Tottenham Hotspur this afternoon.
Joao Gomes scored either side of the break and Dejan Kulusevski’s goal to cap the latest display of character and attitude, with O’Neil saying his players fought for the badge down in the capital. The head coach also spoke of his satisfaction with how the group dealt without leading the presence of Matheus Cunha, as they stretched their unbeaten run on the road to six matches.
On managing a special group
“Having worked with them, it’s not a surprise that they keep surprising other people. To me, they’re together and willing to work. You can see out there, everyone’s out on their feet at the end, they’re giving absolutely everything for the club, for myself, for each other, which always gives us a chance. We do have some real quality.
“The squad is small, as we’ve spoken about, and the fact it is small allows us to have some really good players in there. It’s key we work hard to keep them fit because we don’t have great depth, but we’ll keep pushing. We can’t get too unlucky with too many other serious injuries to top players. If we’re fortunate and things go our way, and we’re able to keep pushing, so we’ll how far up the table we can finish.
“I love the fans dreaming. One of my favourite parts of the job is I’m not allowed to get carried away and think about things that might happen, but I love them being able to think about it. If we were on 22 points right now, they’d be worried about how we get our next win, so the fact we’ve got to 35 already, they can talk about a title charge for all I care. I’m delighted they’re enjoying themselves and got to share another fantastic moment with them today which is special. You can see the connection between the players and fans, and we need to keep trying to push it.”
On the performance at Spurs
“Obviously the result is excellent. To come to Tottenham and win is not easy, so fantastic result for us. Performance wise, I thought we deserved the victory. I thought the chances created were excellent, we were able to counter attack well, one thing we know we’ll be able to do.
“When Tottenham pressed us, the lads were able to have good solutions in the structure to cause them problems in possession, as well as just counters. We knew we’d be able to press aggressively sometimes, and we’d have to be in a compact, low block and try to make the spaces small other times. If they were the four key parts to the game plan, I thought we looked near enough perfect in all of them today. Credit to the group.”
On Gomes’ fine display
“I knew Joao would be massive to us today, the way I saw the game going and what I thought we needed from the game plan. He suffered a kick on his foot Wednesday in training, kicked the bottom of someone’s boot, and it swelled up quite bad. We were worried we’d not have him back in time and I knew that would be a huge blow because today’s game was going to suit him. We were going to be without the ball for spells, but we were going to try and make it compact and we knew he’d be able to press people and regain the ball like he did. I thought he was excellent at that.
“Very keen to improve what he is the with ball, he knows that, we work very hard on that with him. Giving him some criticism to keep him ground, we had a fantastic opportunity in the first half, and I think he misses Pedro and it goes off for a throw in. Those moments for him to be perfect at, as well as what he was able to do without the ball and two fantastic goals. For a 23-year-old to come away to Tottenham and produce that performance is extremely impressive.”
On coping without Cunha
“The lads today, losing Matheus Cunha and how big he’s been for us, because it is a massive blow to lose him with the form he’s been in, for us to come away and win without Matheus shows the boys that we can still do this as a team, we can stick together, we can still create chances. I missed Matheus a lot today, I missed seeing him do what he does and what he gives to the team, but I also enjoyed seeing the team fight and scrap and produce moments of quality without him.”
On bouncing back to conceding
“Terrible goal, especially so similar to the Manchester United goal where we were at 3-3 and we let them throw it into an attacking player. Crazy really, to do it once and repeat it today. It’s something we know we need to improve. Once they throw it into an attacking player, there’s chances and ricochets, missed tackles and all of a sudden it’s in your goal. We can’t afford to give goals away like that, to give Tottenham that lift, because we were in control first half, I know they had possession, but we created far better chances.
“My talk at half time was to keep pushing forward and create more chances and scoring more goals. To give the place a lift so quickly was obviously very disappointing, but I speak about it with the boys a lot, they will be tested. There’d be a setback, a refereeing decision, someone will score against us, there’ll be something you need to dig in and get together on and I’m delighted they managed to respond in the way they did and created three of four big chances.”
